‘Or gunboat. British Navy or Free French, one or the other. They’ll be there, Monsieur. They’ve never let us down yet.’
‘So long, René, take care of her,’ Craig called as they pushed him out through the waves and the tiny outboard motor carried him on.
Rounding the point and facing the open sea, he was soon in trouble. The waves lifted in white caps, the wind freshening, and water slopped over the sides so that he was already ankle-deep. Bleriot was right. He could see the Grosnez light occasionally through gaps in the fog blown by the wind and he was steering towards it when suddenly the outboard motor died on him. He worked at it frantically, pulling the starting cord, but the dinghy drifted helplessly, pulled in by the current.
A heavy wave, long and smooth and much larger than the others swept in, lifting the dinghy high in the air, where it paused in a kind of slow-motion, water pouring in.
It went down like a stone and Craig Osbourne drifted helplessly in the water, buoyed up by his lifejacket.
It was intensely cold, biting into his arms and legs like acid so that even the pain of his wound faded for the time being. Another large wave came over and he drifted down the other side into calmer water.
‘Not good, my boy,’ he told himself. ‘Not good at all,’ and then the wind tore another hole in the curtain of the fog and he saw the light of Grosnez, he heard a muted throbbing of engines, saw a dark shape out there.
He raised his voice and called frantically. ‘Over here!’ and then he remembered the luminous signal ball that Bleriot had given him, got it out of his pocket, fumbling with frozen fingers, and held it up in the palm of his right hand.
The curtain of fog dropped again, the Grosnez light disappeared and the throb of the engines seemed to be swallowed by the night.
‘Here, damn you!’ Osbourne cried and then the torpedo boat drifted out of the fog like a ghost ship and bore down on him.
He had never felt such relief in his life as a searchlight was switched on and picked him out in the water. He started to flail towards it, forgetting his arm for the moment and stopped suddenly. There was something about the craft, something wrong. The paintwork for example. Dirty white merging into sea green, a suggestion of striping for camouflage and then the flag on the jackstaff flared out with a sharp crack in a gust of wind and he saw the swastika plainly, the cross of the upper left-hand corner, the scarlet and black of the Kriegsmarine. No MTB this but a German E-boat and as it slid alongside, he saw painted on the prow beside its number the legend Lili Marlene.
The E-boat seemed to glide to a halt, the engines only a murmur now. He floated there, sick at heart, looking up at the two Kriegsmarine ratings in side-caps and peajackets who looked down at him. And then one of them threw a rope ladder over the rail.
‘All right, my old son,’ he said in ripest Cockney. ‘Let’s be having you.’
They had to help him over the rail and he crouched, vomiting a little on the deck. He looked up warily as the German sailor with the Cockney accent said cheerfully, ‘Major Osbourne, is it?’
‘That’s right.’
The German leaned down. ‘You’re losing a lot of blood from the left arm. Better take a look at that for you, sir. I’m the sick berth attendant.’
Osbourne said, ‘What goes on here?’
‘Not for me to say, sir. That’s the skipper’s department. Fregattenkapitän Berger, sir. You’ll find him on the bridge.’
Craig Osbourne got to his feet wearily, fumbling at the straps of his lifejacket, taking it off, stumbling to the small ladder and went up. Then he went into the wheelhouse. There was a rating at the wheel, an Obersteuermann from his rank badges, Chief Helmsman. The man in the swivel chair at the small chart table wore a crumpled Kriegsmarine cap. It had a white top to it, usually an affectation of U-boat commanders, but common enough amongst E-boat captains who saw themselves as the elite of the Kriegsmarine. He wore an old white polo neck sweater under a reefer coat and turned to look at Osbourne, his face calm and expressionless.
‘Major Osbourne,’ he said in good American. ‘Glad to have you aboard. Excuse me for a moment. We need to get out of here.’
He turned to the coxswain and said in German, ‘All right, Langsdorff. Leave silencers on until we’re five miles out. Course two-one-oh. Speed, twenty-five knots until I say different.’
‘Course two-one-oh, speed twenty-five knots, Herr Kapitän,’ the coxswain replied and took the E-boat away with a surge of power.
‘Hare,’ Craig Osbourne said. ‘Professor Martin Hare.’
Hare took a cigarette from a tin of Benson & Hedges and offered him one. ‘You know me? Have we met?’
Osbourne took the cigarette, fingers trembling. ‘After Yale, I was a journalist. Worked for Life magazine amongst others. Paris, Berlin. I spent a lot of my youth in both of those places. My dad was State Department. A diplomat.’
‘But when did we meet?’
‘I came home for a vacation. That’s Boston, by the way. April, ’39. A friend told me about this series of lectures you were giving at Harvard. Supposedly on German Literature, but very political, very anti-Nazi. I went to four of them.’
‘Were you there for the riot?’
‘When the American Bund tried to break things up? Oh, sure. I broke a knuckle on some ape’s jaw. You were quite something.’ Osbourne shivered and the door opened and the Cockney appeared.
‘What is it, Schmidt?’ Hare asked in German.
Schmidt was holding a blanket. ‘I thought the Major might need this. I would also point out to the Herr Kapitän that he is wounded in the left arm and needs medical attention.’
‘Then do your job, Schmidt,’ Martin Hare told him. ‘Get on with it.’
Seated on the narrow chair at the tiny ward room table below, Osbourne watched as Schmidt expertly bandaged the wound. ‘A little morphine, guvnor, just to make things more comfortable.’ He took an ampoule from his kit and jabbed it on to Osbourne’s arm.
Craig said, ‘Who are you? No German, that’s for sure.’
‘Oh, but I am in a manner of speaking, or at least my parents were. Jews who thought London might be more hospitable than Berlin. I was born in Whitechapel myself.’
Martin Hare said from the door in German, ‘Schmidt, you have a big mouth.’
Schmidt stood up and sprang to attention. ‘Jawohl, Herr Kapitän.’
‘Go on, get out of here.’
‘Zu befehl, Herr Kapitän.’
Schmidt grinned and went out taking his medical kit with him. Hare lit a cigarette. ‘This is a mixed crew. Americans and Brits, some Jews, but everyone speaks fluent German and they have only one identity when they serve on this ship.’
‘Our very own E-boat,’ Osbourne said. ‘I’m impressed. The best kept secret I’ve come across in quite a while.’
‘I should tell you that we play this game to the hilt. Normally, only German is spoken, only Kriegsmarine uniform worn, even back at base. It’s a question of staying in character. Of course the guys break the language rule sometimes. Schmidt is a good example.’
‘And where’s base?’
‘A little port called Cold Harbour near Lizard Point in Cornwall.’
‘How far?’
‘From here? A hundred miles. We’ll have you there by morning. We take our time on the way back. Our people warn us in advance of the Royal Navy MTB routes each night. We like to keep out of their way.’
‘I